Feature Stories » lovehttp://www.utexas.edu/features/
The University of Texas at AustinMon, 30 Apr 2012 22:49:40 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1Love can be a complex mix of chemistry and emotions, professor sayshttp://www.utexas.edu/features/2009/02/09/love_science/
http://www.utexas.edu/features/2009/02/09/love_science/#commentsMon, 09 Feb 2009 20:19:23 +0000News Administratorhttp://www.utexas.edu/news/?p=3849For Dr. Tim Loving, Valentine’s Day is more than just chocolates, flowers, a nice dinner, smooches and long, loving gazes at your partner. It’s also a kind of laboratory of hormones, chemicals, cultural expectations and interpersonal dynamics that raises profound questions about the biological basis of our emotions.

Dr. Tim Loving, assistant professor of human development and family sciences in the School of Human Ecology, studies romantic relationships and the physiological basis of attraction.Photo: Christina Murrey

Loving, an assistant professor in the School of Human Ecology, studies a number of aspects of romantic relationships. He’s been particularly interested, of late, in the short-term physiological effects of being in the presence of–or even just thinking about–a romantic partner.

“In a context like a Valentine’s Day dinner,” says Loving, “there’s a lot of stuff going on.”

To start, he says, simply being in the presence of someone whom we find attractive can trigger the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that’s connected to the brain’s pleasure system (and that seems to be involved, for instance, in why people get pleasure from using cocaine and amphetamines).

Valentine’s Day, says Loving, can be understood as a way to reinforce this basic pleasure with a bevy of other pleasure-inducing activities.

“It’s the first rule of interpersonal attraction: we’re attracted to people whose presence is rewarding to us,” he says. “Flowers are pretty. People like to get flowers. We like people who give us flowers. Nice music is relaxing, and we like to be with people who make us feel comfortable and safe. Whether it’s because there’s an actual biological response that makes us feel good–and there’s evidence, for instance, that chocolate has such an effect–or just because we’ve learned culturally that it’s good, it still contributes to the overall mood.”

The dynamic between the biological and the cultural, says Loving, is so complex and reciprocal that it’s impossible to disentangle it in any fundamental sense. It is possible, however, to characterize some of the effects and patterns that emerge.

It’s the culture, for instance, that lays out the expectations for what a satisfactory Valentine’s Day will look like, but it’s in the nature of human cognition to order specific sets of expectations into what social psychologists call a “script.” These scripts, then, condition, dampen and amplify physiological responses.

In the case of Valentine’s Day, says Loving, the script is established early in our lives–with the cards, for instance, we give our classmates in elementary school–and reinforced so many times that by the time we’re actually participating in the ritual as adults, the script has been written into our biology.

When things go as planned, says Loving, this works to our benefit. From the minute we head out the door to the restaurant, we’re releasing dopamine. We’re producing elevated levels of hormones like adrenalin and cortisol, which induce a state of physiological excitement, as well as oxytocin, which promotes trust and bonding. And we’re associating this rush of good feeling and arousal with our partner.

When things go wrong, the same brew of hormones that boosts the positive orientation of a good Valentine’s Day dinner can amplify the negative feelings.

“I think you can build it up and set the expectations beyond what can reasonably be met,” he says. “If a partner doesn’t step up to the plate, that can carry a lot of weight.”

In his research, Loving has paid particular attention to cortisol, which is the body’s primary stress hormone, and which can be a factor, it seems, in both negative and positive responses.

“When we say ‘stress,’ we tend to think of it in a negative light,” says Loving. “But in the physiological context, it has to do with a state of arousal.

“When we’re attracted to somebody, we need to have a certain level of arousal in order to achieve a connection with that person. It’s the overall emotional context that’s going to color the nature of our arousal.”

In a recent study, Loving and his colleagues measured the cortisol levels in a sample of women who self-identified as being “madly, deeply in love” with their partners. He found that when these women were asked to reflect on their relationship with their partner, their cortisol levels spiked.

Loving also found that the cortisol levels stayed elevated for significantly longer in the women who are more “relationship-focused”–who are the kind of people who tend to ruminate on relationships regardless of whether or not they happen to be in one at the time.

“One of the things that’s most fascinating to me,” says Loving, “is how our own individual disposition–how we view the world–interacts with basic biological processes.

“People like me, for instance, who spend a lot of time thinking about relationships, are going to be more affected by these physiological processes.”

This biological sensitivity to relationships, says Loving, has implications that go well beyond the intensity with which someone experiences a good or bad Valentine’s Day.

His research, for instance, suggests people who are in good relationships tend to heal from wounds faster than people who aren’t.

Even more tantalizing, and frightening, are the possibilities that emerge for deploying our understanding of these processes to alter our emotions.

Such a drug, says Loving, wouldn’t make you fall in love with another person, but it might prime you to feel excited in their presence, and, once excited, to be more open than usual to bonding with them. In a very new relationship, he says, the effects could be determinative.

“The data we’re seeing,” he says, “seem to suggest that, in the case of relationship initiation, you could completely create a strong attraction toward another person.

“It’s similar to what happens when you do something exciting around someone else. ‘I feel good, my body feels good, and you’re here.’ We call it ‘misattribution of arousal.’ If you give somebody something that’s going to arouse them in the presence of another person, those feelings should go ahead and drive attraction to the person who happens to be nearby. In some ways you don’t even need a drug, you just need a good roller coaster.”

That we don’t all take our first dates to the amusement park, says Loving, is evidence of the complexity of people–not everyone likes roller coasters–and also of the limitations of arousal in the development of a relationship.

“Eventually a relationship has to get beyond just an intense physical attraction,” Loving says, “and that’s where the mind and people’s individual disposition play the dominant role. But that visceral drive to be with another person–it’s looking like that’s biology’s role.”

Even in the case of long marriages, however, we may end up using a drug to help restore lost passion, or to help work through a tough patch.

“When people have a long history, and a lot of baggage,” Loving says, “simply having them take something isn’t going to override everything that got them there in the first place, but it could give them a little bit of a break in some of those ill feelings. It could give them space to try to connect with one another.”

The prospect of using drugs to manipulate our emotions may be the stuff of science fiction–and Shakespeare, for that matter–but Loving suspects that a lot of the fears of our biochemically inflected future come from misapprehensions about what love is in the first place.

We already use all kinds of tools to help us fall or stay in love. (What else is Valentine’s Day but just such a tool?) And we’re already pretty familiar with the idea of using our bodies to improve our moods, even if we just think of it as taking a jog or a moonlit walk on the beach.

“A lot of people want to maintain this romantic ideal of relationships, this idea that we do it all on our own,” he says. “What we’re learning, I think, is that love has a little bit less to do with our own personal preferences than we think.

“Biology’s playing a role, and you can actually tweak your biology. Maybe it’s not as romantic, but I think the truth is that people need help in a lot of ways. Right now, when a couple comes in to a marriage counselor and says that they’ve lost passion in their marriage, they’re told to go do things together–to go to a movie, take a walk, create shared memories. All those things they’re doing are affecting their biological processes. They’re creating new associations in the brain. What’s so wrong with giving that a little kickstart?”

For Loving, there’s power even in the knowledge of how deeply our emotions are entwined in our biology. It enables us, if only in a limited way, to be more thoughtful about the choices we make and about the expectations we set for ourselves and our loved one.

When it comes to Valentine’s Day, for instance, Loving and his wife have made a conscious effort, in the past, to keep it relatively simple, to avoid weighing it with too much significance. This year, they’re planning on a low-key evening at home.

“I guess we’re still in the honeymoon phase with our five-month-old daughter,” he says. “We’d rather stay home with her than go out and be away from her.”

Not that Loving doesn’t assign any significance to Feb. 14.

“We send out our annual holiday newsletter each year around Valentine’s Day,” he says. “We are ‘The Lovings’ after all.”

]]>http://www.utexas.edu/features/2009/02/09/love_science/feed/0Researchers diagnose health consequences of marriage, divorcehttp://www.utexas.edu/features/2008/02/11/marriage/
http://www.utexas.edu/features/2008/02/11/marriage/#commentsMon, 11 Feb 2008 16:44:31 +0000News Administratorhttp://www.utexas.edu/news/?p=2763» Continue Reading]]>So, why aren’t you married? It’s an age-old question dreaded by single people. The underlying assumption of the awkward inquiry: there is something wrong with being single and one’s life is somehow incomplete without a partner.

But does marriage mean you will live happily, and healthfully, ever after?

Research does reveal that married people live longer than their single counterparts. They have lower rates of heart failure and cancer, develop expanded networks of social support and have more frequent sex.

However, the reasons why married people tend to be healthier are not fully understood, says Dr. Debra Umberson, professor of sociology and affiliate of the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

“In recent years, the health disparity between the marrieds and the never-marrieds has actually narrowed,” Umberson says. “After investigating what people get out of relationships, we’ve found that it is not the case that any marriage is better than no marriage at all when it comes to health benefits.”

The honeymoon is over

Umberson’s recent study, “You Make Me Sick,” shows that while a good marriage may offer health benefits, a bad marriage can be detrimental to your health.

“I’ve always been interested in how people want to be in relationships, but then often seem miserable once they are in one,” she says. “For many people, relationships are a double-edged sword.”

Umberson and a team of researchers examined more than 1,000 married couples in three waves of interviews as part of a study supported by the National Institute on Aging.

Participants answered a series of questions about their marital quality, such as:

How satisfied are you with your marriage?

How much does your husband/wife make you feel loved and cared for?

How much is he/she willing to listen when you need to talk about your worries or problems?

How often do you feel bothered or upset by your marriage?

How often would you say the two of you typically have unpleasant disagreements or conflicts?

Responses revealed that marital strain is a key source of stress, which can affect one’s immune system and accelerate the typical decline in health that occurs over time, especially as couples age. In other words, a wedding ring doesn’t guarantee good health.

However, she notes the purpose of the study is not to issue a call for divorce but to raise awareness about the importance of identifying marital difficulties and seeking to improve marital quality.

Health consequences of divorce

Dr. Mark Hayward, sociologist and director of the Population Research Center, says his work has a similar purpose. He researches the health consequences of divorce.

“The choices we make in our relationships can permanently affect our health trajectories later in life,” Hayward explains.

Dr. Mark Hayward’s research focuses on the health experiences of older Americans.

In a recent study funded by the National Institute on Aging, Hayward found that divorced middle-aged women are 60 percent more likely to have cardiovascular disease than women who remain married.

“Divorce is one of the most stressful things a person can go through in life, so it makes sense that it has such a pronounced effect on women’s cardiovascular health,” Hayward says.

The sociologist’s study, with colleague Zhenmei Zhang at Michigan State University, is based on data from the Health and Retirement Study, which tracked a nationally representative sample of nearly 10,000 men and women aged 51-61 from 1992 to 2000.

Hayward found divorced women have the lowest household income and wealth, compared to married women, widows and women who remarry.

“Divorce clearly leads to a drop in financial resources,” he says. “Add that to the emotional distress that can stem from a change in residence, loss of social support or the potential of single parenting, and divorced middle-aged women are facing incredible stress that puts them at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to their cardiovascular health.”

Divorce, however, does not increase the odds of heart disease among middle-aged men.

“Men’s health is not immune to divorce,” Hayward notes. “But because men typically get heart disease at younger ages than women, the effect of divorce for men may play out before middle age. Also, divorce appears to have negative consequences for other major health problems among middle-aged men—just not cardiovascular disease.”

Hayward was surprised the negative consequences of divorce did not go away with time, showing that divorce’s effects on women’s cardiovascular health appear to linger long after the divorce.

“From a social policy perspective,” Hayward says, “we need to think about how we can help women navigate the divorce experience so that it doesn’t have such significant health consequences.”

Importance of careful mate selection

Dr. Kelly Raley, associate professor of sociology and affiliate of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, says the negative health consequences of a bad marriage and divorce underscore the importance of why individuals should be extremely careful in mate selection.

In the study, “Not Even if You Were the Last Person on Earth,” Raley examined how the process of mate selection influences the timing of marriage.

The median age of marriage has climbed steadily since the early 1970s. In 1970, the median age for women to marry was 20.8 and for men, 23.2. By 1995, both men’s and women’s median age at marriage had increased 3.7 years, to 26.9 and 24.5, respectively.

“An explanation for delays in marriage past age 23 could be that there is a growing mismatch between what men are looking for in a mate and what women are looking for,” Raley says. “If both men and women hope to improve their financial status by marrying a higher-earning spouse, it will take longer for both to find a suitable mate.”

Raley found that men who were unwilling to marry a woman who earned less than they did were less likely to marry.

“Interestingly, men were more willing to marry women with higher education and earning power than themselves, which is in contrast to previous ideals of marriage,” Raley says. “This suggests that the foundation of marriage is changing and that men now recognize the potential benefit of a higher earning partner. We’re now looking at marriage as a cooperative relationship rather than one of rigid gender roles.”

Defending marriage

In a recent opinion piece for the Dallas Morning News, “In Defense of Marriage,” Dr. Norval Glenn, professor of sociology, wrote that for most adults, marriage is still the best arrangement for providing material and emotional security.

Dr. Norval Glenn has spent the past quarter of a century researching issues concerning marriage, divorce and remarriage in the United States.

However, Glenn admits the institutional mechanisms for bringing people together are not working like they used to. As more people choose to marry later in life, few social institutions have arisen to replace the role that local communities, families and schools once played.

Still, Umberson and Raley assert the stigma of singlehood is in decline.

“Previously, the choice to never marry was viewed as deviant or extremely tragic,” Umberson says. “Today that’s just not the case.”

We know marriage has health benefits for both men and women, Hayward adds, but it’s a complex story. As divorce rates level off, cohabitation becomes increasingly common and the median age of marriage increases. But, it’s not clear how future marriage trends will affect health outcomes, he concludes.

“Increasingly,” he says, “couples are in a two-income household, many face long commutes, education costs are rising and the paycheck doesn’t stretch as far. The middle-class crunch adds stress and social circumstances that have health consequences for marriage that we’re just now starting to study. And, there are no easy solutions for how we solve these problems.”